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Talk:V'ger
On a role with topics of late, apparently... Anyway: In the feature article on V'Ger, I've noticed one predominant, glaring error...at least, if my own mathematical calculations and/or chronological ("stopwatch") records in the movie are accurate. In the article, it states that V'Ger was estimated to be about the size of the solar asteroid Eros, or about the dimensions of the Terran island of Manhattan. I have no idea where this reference comes from, but that would be literally impossible for V'Ger to be anywhere near that small, for several reasons. First, and foremost, Kirk at one point tells Sulu that he wants him to guide the ship down to 500 meters off the V'Ger spacecraft surface, and gets a bug-eyed look back, obviously at how close that would be. Yet 500 meters is 0.5 kilometers; visual comparison on screen to V'Ger at this time makes clear the Enterprise being approximately the size of a pea, versus a small building. He then tells Sulu to take them out "to 100 kilometers distance, adjusting parallel course." Sulu does so...and such things as the V'Ger orifice, shortly thereafter, literally tower over the Enterprise...especially when the ship is drawn through the orifice immediately after Ilia is taken, and the rest of V'Ger stretches on to the proverbial horizon to left and right. If 100 kilometers distance is flown over a craft 20 kilometers long, the distance above it would've been five times the length of V'Ger...and yet V'Ger is easily large enough to hold well over 100 Enterprise''s in its "amphitheater" holding chamber alone. The second point that makes 20 kilometers an impossibility is the traveling speed of NASA's space shuttle, of all things. In orbit around the Earth, the shuttle travels at a pace of roughly 18,000 miles per hour. Insanely fast, if it were in the atmosphere, but it's of course not. In orbit, it might well be said to gently, or lazily, float around Earth. It is also composed of rocket technology of our own day and age. Are they actually willing to claim that our rockets would be pushing the space shuttle orbiter faster than ''Enterprise would be going at impulse, or even half-impulse? When they left Earth orbit, Earth became much smaller, VERY quickly, in their reverse angle. To say V'Ger is 20 kilometers long is to say that that during the pass over the ship, 23rd century Enterprise was going MUCH slower than the space shuttle...and somehow I doubt that. At a speed comparable to shuttle cruising pace, 18,000 mph, Kirk and crew would've covered a distance of 28,968 km/h. Even if you half that time to thirty minutes (and it was a little more than that), between first sighting the V'Ger ship after passing through the cloud to reaching the amphitheater, that pace would have them cover just over 14,000 km. ... 14,000-20,000 km, vs. 20 km. V'Ger was roughly 100 teams larger than the article claims. Being that as it is, I bring it all up here, rather than its talk page, because it'd be a major change to what is otherwise rightly a featured article. -- ChrisK 10:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC) :: It's huge Majorthomme 05:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC) ::: Hah! --OuroborosCobra talk 05:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC) :: Im still uncomfortable with 14,000-20,000 km. Those numbers assume RCS speed, which is far less than impulse. I can watch the movie again and see if they make mention of exactly what speed they were going, but to think that they were going on thrusters for all that time is troubleing. Calculate the size based on Half (12.5% c) and Full-Impulse (25% c according to DITL). I get 67 million km at full impulse, 33 million km at half, and we can even say quarter impulse at 16 million km, give or take a million, assumeing that the opening is on the exact opposite side of V'Ger as the spacecraft surface. --Sdamon 13:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)